Software done at home

Having some time on my hands, I decided to try a few things at home. While doing so, I browsed the web extensively to find examples, explanations, and documentation. I'm presenting the results here, so feel free to make use of anything that you find useful.

Showing a small function to encapsulate the AJAX essentials and an example of how to use it. I've stuck to giving outline information, but where something came up that I felt the reader might want to research further, I've put q.v. in brackets, thus (q.v.). There are plenty of sources that will certainly do a better job than I can of detail about or a precise definition of something.